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September 13, 1992. A piece of paper, two signatures today seen as the beginning of the end of patriot wars and vengeance between arabs and jews. A day that could have lead to the unthinkable. Peace in the middle east. Israel and the palestinians sign a pact on the white house lawn. Supporters of the declaration are dancing in the streets of that west bank town of jericho at this hour. The reality changed today in the middle east. Enough of blood. Enough the comprehensive peace in the middle east happening now in jerusalem, the scenes that took place in washington are being replayed. Go in peace, go as peacemakers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 30 years and one month later an unthinkable day, an allout Massacre On Israeli soil perpetrated by hamas. War erupts in the middle east. The attack caught israel by surprise at sunrise. Major cities in israel including tel aviv and jerusalem. It is a shocking and unprecedented escalation in the regions long history of conflict. Babies slaughtered, entire families massacres, releashes pure, unadulterated evil on the world. Israel is fighting back at hamas with strengths on cities in gaza after the staged terrorist attack. We are all left with a crucial question to ponder. How did we get from here let us all celebrate the dawn of a new era. To here. [ explosion ] intense fighting is still under way. We have just had a massive barrage of rockets coming in here. [ siren ] to help us understand, im going to talk to historians on both sides of the divide, and a former u. S. Ambassador to israel who has been involved in middle east diplomacy since the administration of john f. Kennedy. Welcome to this Fareed Zakaria gps special the road to war in the middle east. Now we could take you back thousands of years, but in this special we will start our focus on the closest the two sides ever got to peace since the founding of israel. Briefly it bears mentioning that the first steps toward israels statehood began in 1947 when in the wake of the holocaust that saw some 6 million jews murdered the United Nations voted to Split Palestine into two, one jewish state and one arab state. At this point the population of palestine was about a third jewish. The Jews In Palestine Beinga Sented the plan, but the arabs rejected it. Nevertheless, the british pulled out and on may 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state of israel. A mere day later the new nations neighbors declared war and israel has been in a state of war or under the threat of it ever since while the palestinians have remained in limbo, but that sunny day in 1993, september 13th, brought the first real hope for peace. President bill clinton had convened israeli and palestinian leaders on the white house lawn to make a major step toward that peace, to sign the socalled oslo accord. The document signed that day and in the days leading up said that the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized israels rate to exist. That israel recognized the plo as the sole representative of the palestinian people, that israel would pull out of much of the Palestinian Territories after occupying and controlling them starting in 1967, and that the plo renounced violence. The parties were exchanging land for peace. After the signing, the world watched stunned as plo chairman Yasser Arafat reached out his hand to israels Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and stunned again when rabin reached out his hand in return. Lets pick up there with two great observers of the politics of the region and i spoke to a scholar at oxford, but first up, beni morris, an imminent israeli h historian who has written extensively about the middle east Peace Process. Rabin looked to be very reluctant. Explain that. Look, rabin had been a soldier for many years. He was the Chief Of Staff of the israeli army. He had been fighting palestinian terrorists for a long time and regarded arafat as a terrorist. He didnt really believe, i think in his heart that arafat would change into a statesman from a terrorist, but he wanted to give it a chance, i think, and so he reached this agreement with the fan. Was it difficult for arafat to get there . Talk about what he had to do to get there and shake hands with rabin . Arafat had to do an awful lot, and i think one of the misconceptions of the whole period is the degree to which arafat was determined to try and reach a Peace Agreement with the israelis. This started in 1988 at the Palestine Liberation Organizations Palestine National council which is the highest body within the plo which took a decision which was the basis of what we call today a twostate solution. It was a decision to accept the palestinian state on the areas occupied in 1967 in East Jerusalem, the west bank and the gaza strip. Oslo was not particularly popular among the palestinians and among the palestinians as a whole, the imbalance was evident. The israelis were not offering a state. The Israelis In Oslo were not offering a state. The israelis were simply offering an interim period in the israeli concept of oslo everything was reversible. On the palestinian side it was seen as irreversible and that was the fundamental difference in the way that both sides saw oslo. There was great distrust. Especially on, i think it was true of both of them upon arafat and rabin distrusted the other side. They felt the other side was cheating. The jews were busy taking peace and moving slowly towards peace and at the same time they were building settlements and the arabs were talking peace and they were busy Murdering Jews in busses and restaurants and there was mistrust and dont forget that arafat had been a terrorist for most of his life and the charter of his movement, the fatah called for israels destruction and rabin himself simply didnt trust these people. The oslo agreement was essentially asymmetrical. The plo got formal recognition. The israelis got plos recognition to live in peace and security. So where the israelis got a very significant political prize, the plo got a formal procedural agreement in terms of representation. So the asymmetry there reflected, of course, the balance of power. The oslo accords meant that israel would withdraw from the cities of the west bank and from the gaza strip, pull out its troops and allow arafat and his plo units who had been living and training in tunis and other places to come into the west bank and to come to the gaza strip and basically take sort of administrative control of the main towns in the west bank and the gaza strip on the whole. So they were side by side in those interim years in the 90s the Autonomous Palestinian Authority governing the cities of the west bank and the gaza strip, side by side with Israeli Military government which was in charge of the security for the whole of the west bank and the gaza strip. It was an uneasy arrangement. In february, 1994, very soon after The Oslo Agreement was signed and began implementation, was there the massacre at the Ibrahimic Mosque where an idf officer belonging to an extreme rightwing Israeli Group mowed down 30 muslims at prayer in the mosque and the subsequent protest the israeli army killed another 30 changing completely, both the atmosphere and beginning the process in which The Oslo Agreement was provided by significant violence on the palestinian side. Hamas took responsibility on itself with a series of Suicide Bombings. Next, we will pick up the story at a major Turning Point. One that threatened the very existence of the Peace Process. The assassination of israels Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Did it indeed end the hopes for a lasting peace . Well be back with two sets of answers in a moment. On november 4, 1995, israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin spoke at a peace rally in tel aviv. The man who had shaken Yasser Arafats hand on the white house lawn hailed his partners in peace manage the palestinians. He declared that peace is the true desire of the jewish people, but prophetically, he warned of threats from enemies to the Peace Process. As he was leaving the rally rabin was a assassinated by a jewish extremist who did not believe in peace with the palestinians. I asked how rabins death affected the Peace Process. Did rabins assassination kill oslo definitely . We can never tell. It was never clear what rabin had in mind, and i dont think he was committed to an independent palestinian state and certainly not in the whole of the occupied territories, nonetheless, the very beginnings and the glimmerings of some kind of understanding on between him and arafat have begun to emerge, i think the Turning Point in hebron was a very important one that the point of the Hebron Massacre had the Israeli Government with Yitzhak Rabin at the head taken a decision to vacate the Israeli Settlers from the heart of hebron, because these were the hard core, the very hard core settlers with the person who committed the act in the mosque came from, had they removed them, had they remove them i think the whole course of the interaction between the palestinians and the israelis would have changed, but rabin did not and the settlers were not removed and the message came from the palestinians that the israelis, theres nothing that will budge them from the positions that they had taken. So rabin gets assassinated and his successor is shimon peres who seems determined to continue what rabin had been trying to do, and rabin had been trying to reach out it syria and he had already made peace with jordan. What happens after rabins death and does paris try to take the lead . Yeah. After rabins assassination, it seemed that his successor shimon peres who incidentally had been the man pushing for peace in the rabin government and Pushing Rabin Towards Peace Making He Succeeded rabin, and it seemed that he was set on the course to win the elections, but then a wave of hamas terrorism pushed the israelis right wards. What about the hamas Suicide Bombings after rabins death . How much did they how much did all that derail the direction that things were going in . Well, the truth is that for six months from summer until the end of 1995, hamas had stopped its Suicide Bombings. They only started again when the israelis decided in the spur of the moment, shimon peres and the Prime Minister who succeeded rabin decided to kill the senior Military Leader of hamas at that time, which then sparked another wave of Suicide Bombings. The Suicide Bombings helped to bring peres down. And eventually Benjamin Netanyahu won the election by a slim majority, but in the election basic ally on this wav of antizionist and antiisraeli by arabs. It was clear that he would not move further towards peace. He rejected the idea of a twostate solution, and the Peace Process got stuck for three years from 19 from 1996 when he was elected until 1999 when he was thrown out by the public. He would claim that he actually implemented part of the oslo accords. He gave back hebron and things like that, but talk about bibi for those years, bibi and oslo. Well, netanyahu was both a rightwinger and a mpragmatist. I think he was pressured by the American Government to sign an additional small segment of a treaty in which he basically withdrew the jewish troops from most of the town of hebron. It was the last major town not controlled by the plo, by what was called then the Palestinian Authority, but he was very reluctant in doing this and basically vowed to not return the west bank to the palestinians and he encouraged new settlements and did not move toward a twostate solution which is one of the reasons he was voted out of power in 1999, even though the demographics were in his favor, many people didnt like his mismanagement and he was if government and it was his first term in office, so he wasnt really suited to be a Prime Minister. Incnext, well go to netanyahus political successor ehud barack and his risky onetime gambit for peace at camp david when we come back. Im a little anxious, im a little excited. Im gonna be emotional, shes gonna be emotional, but its gonna be so worth it. I love that i can give back to one of our customers. I hope you enjoy these amazing gifts. Oh my goodness. Oh, you guys. I know you like wrestling, so we got you some vip tickets. You have made an impact. So have you. For you guys to be out here doing Something Like this, it restores a lot of faith in humanity. In may 1999 the highly decorated general Erckhud Barac was elected in a landslide. At rabin square, barack paid tribute to his late mentor Yitzhak Rabin and vowed to carry on his legacy. He said, i tell you that the time for peace has come, not peace through weakness, but peace through might and a sense of security. Not peace at the expense of security, but peace that will bring security. It was a moment of optimism for those who hoped for a twostate solution. Israelis and palestinians alike, but if a res lugsz was to be reached barack wanted to spedly and he pushed for a resolution followed by a onetime summit with Yasser Arafat and u. S. President Bill Clinton At Camp David in july 2000. More now with the israeli historian beni morris and ahmad khalidi. Why did barack win in 1999 . Ehud barack who was also a Chief Of The General staff in his younger days so had a lot of credit in israeli public as a hard line, militant, et cetera, but barack was accepted on a pragmatic peace platform. He said we cant go on like this with the palestinians and we have to reach a final settlement and barak said lets finish this, lets meet the palestinians, lets talk to them and lets negotiate the future of jerusalem, the Refugee Problem and israels borders and palestinian statehood. Lets put it on the table and see if we can reach a Peace Agreement and when he did put it on the table he was invited along with Arafat To Camp David in 2000, these things were put on the table and arafat basically said no. Camp david. The big, as you know, this is the totemic moment according to so many versions of it, Are Abouta Barak Afters peace for a twostate solution and arafat walks away and launches the Second Intifada, tell us what happened at camp david. Barak decided the only way to do this was to create a Pressure Cooker situation where arafat would say yes or no and if he said no he would be seen as a villain. At that point you are talking about a conflict that was 75 years old in which no final status or agreement none of the issues of final stakes agreement was set out in oslo that included borders, settle ams, jerusalem and security these were the main items that they had to decide on in the socalled final stages of humans. He didnt want to, in his opinion, waste Political Capital on small steps. The consequence of that was to add to the palestinians suspicions of what he was up to and instead he wanted to solve the 75yearold conflict in one go, in one Pressure Cooker, in a short period of time and from arafats Point Of View he was being put in a position of take it or leave it. He was also told by clinton, by the way, two things. He was told first, there would be no fingerpointing if the Summit Failed and second that the interim steps that barak had already agreed on would be fulfilled even if the Summit Failed. Neither of these promises came true. And in baraks demise and the lefts demise, in effect, in 2001 in the elections in which the public saw that the palestinians do not want peace so they understood from the outbreak of the Second Intifada which followed arafats rejection of the Peace Proposals, the public voted barak out of office and rightwing governments basically followed. Why Launch A Second Intefadeh instead of continuing the negotiation